Click Pen
by IsabelWalker
Summary: The year after Severus Snape called Lily Evans a "mudblood," Lily returned to school not with her usual quills and ink, but with an arsenal of click pens. James Potter being James Potter finds these pens extremely amusing and takes an interest in them, doing anything he can to get her attention.


Lily Evans rode the Hogwarts Express alone during her sixth year at Hogwarts. It had taken her all summer to get Severus' voice out of her head, but when September 1st finally rolled around, the shout of "mudblood!" had died away to an echo. She sat in a back compartment of the train by a window with a book in her hands. Her bags were thrown haphazardly onto the seat across from her, but she didn't care. There wasn't any ink to worry about spilling this year.

The Great Feast was a joyous affair, as always. Lily chatted with a few other casual friends, ate until her stomach was bursting, then went back up to the dormitories to get some sleep. She hadn't even seen Severus at all that night. And as she drifted off, her dreams were quiet and peaceful.

Term started in full swing. The teachers seemed as stressed about exams as the students were, and they wasted no time in giving them piles of homework to complete by the end of the week. Lily had never been one to procrastinate, so as soon as dinner was over, she took one of the cozy armchairs by the fire in the Gryffindor common room and got to work.

Rummaging through her bag, she pulled out her parchment. But while the rest of the Gryffindors were scratching away with their quills, Lily pulled something else out instead: a click pen. A standard model, like the kind Muggles used. She smiled and clicked it open, then started to scribble down her notes.

Lily had mastered the art of staying focus after her first year at Hogwarts. For a couple of weeks the hustle and bustle of the common room had driven her mad. Now, though, she could write for ages without a single whoop, laugh, or shout breaking her concentration. That is, she could block out all the distractions except for one.

"Evans! Hey, Evans!"

Lily gritted her teeth and took a deep breath to keep her voice calm as she glanced up and fixed the boy with a steady, but clearly irritated look. "Yes?"

James Potter beamed at her, as if nothing had ever happened between them before. He jerked his head toward the pen in her hand. "What's that you've got there?"

"My homework," she said coolly. He had yet another stupid Snitch in his hands, the wings fluttering against his tight grip. His posse was right beside him, Sirius Black lounging along the back of the couch so he could poke James repeatedly in head; Peter Pettigrew chuckling seemingly uncontrollably from his spot on the floor; Remus Lupin sitting at a little bit of a distance away with his own papers spread out around him.

"No, I meant what's that you've got in your hand?"

Lily blinked a few times in her confusion, glancing down at the parchment, then at the pen in her hand. "You mean my pen?" She held it up and clicked it a few times.

James' eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead. He looked a lot like a person trying to figure out a difficult question in the middle of an exam. "Is that a new kind of quill or something? It hasn't got any feathers on it."

Lily snorted. But when James just turned pink around the ears, her eyes widened and it became much harder to contain her laughter. The great James Potter didn't know what a pen was? The more time she spent around witches and wizards the more she realized just how truly sheltered they were.

And there was her advantage to being a muggleborn, she supposed. This was why she wanted to remind herself what she really was, even at school: a mudblood. And she would rub it in Severus' face all she liked, because this was something she accepted about herself. The mudblood would always have the upper hand when it came to Muggle knowledge, and she had the pens to prove it; pens from the pot on her windowsill; pens she'd found lying around in the kitchen; pens she'd nicked from Petunia. And in any case, she'd never quite managed to get used to quills. They were too old-fashioned.

"Sorry," she finally sputtered, pressing her lips together, though the smile was still there. "I didn't realize—you really don't know what a pen is?"

"No, but I haven't kept up on the wonderful world of quills and ink lately," James said sarcastically, but his red face gave himself away. "So what _is_ a pen?"

Lily took a few seconds to gather herself, trying to be polite without laughing. "It's like a quill, but you don't have to dip it in any ink. It has ink inside of it. Muggles use them."

"Blimey, _Muggles_ use them?" James' eyes widened, and Lily swore she even saw Sirius perk up a bit; up until this point he'd just been picking at his nails. "I didn't know they had such things."

She brushed his comment off with a one-sided shrug of her shoulder, glancing back down at her parchment. "Muggles have a lot of things you wouldn't know about. It's like their own kind of magic."

James mumbled, " _Blimey_ ," under his breath a few more times, which Lily found extremely amusing, but didn't let it show as she continued with her homework.

#

"You've got to let it go, mate, it's just a bloody Muggle toy."

"But how does it work? How does the ink get in there? How long does it last? It doesn't make any sense. Muggles don't have magic like that." James scratched the back of his head with one hand as he paced, his hair sticking out in several different directions because of it. The Snitch was still flapping restlessly against his other hand, wings caught between his fingers.

Sirius shrugged from his four-poster bed, shifting positions so he was lying on his side, watching James trying to wear a hole in the ground. "You heard her, Muggles have a lot of things wizards don't know about. It's just a different world we won't ever be a part of."

"But she's a part of it," James insisted, pointing to the door that led out from the dormitory to the common room. There was an almost crazed look in his eyes, a kind of manic curiosity taking over. He wasn't even sure why he was interested. Actually, that was a lie. He knew very well why he was interested, but he wasn't about to admit that to the three boys sitting on their beds.

"She's a muggleborn," Sirius pointed out with a shrug, and tossed the rubber ball he'd nicked off of Snape years ago toward the ceiling, catching it easily as it came back down. "She can straddle that line better than the rest of us. You need to focus on something else, like Quidditch. The season's about to start, Gryffindor needs their star Chaser to have his head in the game if we're going to win."

James shook his head a little distractedly, turning away from them again as he wandered to the window and watched the rain fall. The soft taps of water on windowpane were accompanied by Peter's snoring. That boy slept through anything. James straightened up a few moments later when an idea hit him, and he rushed to Remus, flopping onto the bed beside him. Remus didn't even look up from his textbook, though James knew he'd noticed the boy now lying beside him, no matter how hard he tried to ignore him.

"Hey, Moony," James said with an, 'I-never-ask-for-anything-and-won't-you-please-please-please-help-me?' sort of look. "Hey . . . hey, Moony. Moony. _Moooony._ Moonymoonymoony—"

"Oh my god, what?" Remus finally snapped, dropping the book in his lap he glared at James for interrupting his homework.

James just beamed at him. "You're in Muggle Studies."

"Perceptive."

Waving away his comment with a flap of his hand, James continued. "Do you know anything about pens? The clicky kind that Evans was using?"

"I might." Remus didn't elaborate on the matter, just picked up his book and calmly resumed his reading.

"Might? That sounds like you're avoiding the question, mate. Which means that you _do_ know something, which means that you're just trying to distract me from the fact that you know something, which means that you don't want to tell me anything. But why?"

"Because you're a git," Remus muttered half-heartedly, turning the page. James heard Sirius' snort without even having to turn to see who'd made the noise. "And you're sitting in my light."

"Come on, Moony, give the man a break," Sirius jumped in, turning toward the both of them and tossing the rubber ball to the side. "Besides, there might be others who want to hear about this clicky pen thing, too."

James quirked an eyebrow in Sirius' direction. "I thought it was just a bloody Muggle toy."

Patches of red tinged Sirius' cheeks, which made James smirk. He always like seeing his friend squirm, as it so rarely happened. "It is, I'm just bored."

"Sure you are," James said dryly, and turned back to Remus. He dropped to his knees in front of him with clasped hands, like he was praying. "Please, o' wise one, enlighten us with your knowledge."

"Fine," Remus grumbled, bookmarking his page and sliding the book underneath his pillow. "But you two so owe me for this."

James and Sirius grinned.

#

Lily straightened her books on the desk when she arrived early one morning to Transfiguration. Once the rest of the class started filling in the rows in front and behind her, she picked up her pen, clicked it open, and dated the top of her parchment.

Minerva McGonagall swept into the room with all the grace of a mountain lion and shut the door behind her. She adjusted her spectacles at the front of the room and pulled out her wand, greeting the class with a steady look. There was no smile, but Lily didn't think she'd ever seen the professor smile.

"Good morning, class," she said, gazing at each of the students in turn. "I hope amongst the weekend excitement of Quidditch tryouts and Hogsmeade visits you were still able to find the time to get your homework done. Exams might seem as if they're still quite far away, but—"

She suddenly broke off, brow wrinkling as she frowned and looked around. Several students, including Lily, also turned their heads in confusion.

"What's that clicking noise?" McGonagall asked to no one in particular, craning her neck to see farther back into the room.

Lily suddenly groaned once she'd located the source of the disruption, putting her head in her hands. She could still see James Potter grinning in her peripheral vision, not a care in the world. His feet were even propped lazily on the top of his desk.

The clicking stopped abruptly when McGonagall sighed visibly and folded her hands in front of her, raising a single eyebrow in James' direction. He tilted his head slightly to the side at her, then made an 'o' shape with his mouth.

"Sorry, was I doing it again?" James pointed to himself with a thin, black instrument that he held in his right hand. One might have mistaken it for a wand if it hadn't been so short, but Lily knew full well what it really was. "Professors Slughorn and Merrythought reminded me earlier, but it's a hard habit to break."

"Mr. Potter," McGonagall said in a very subtly irritated voice, the kind of tone one who was familiar with these antics but still not amused by them would use. "What are you doing with that?"

James held up the instrument so she could see, and the entire class turned to look with her. Lily caught Sirius and Peter smirking on either side of him, while Remus, who sat directly behind, looked exasperated. "It's a click pen, Professor. They're like featherless quills. Muggles use them to—"

"Yes, I know what a click pen is, thank you," she said tersely, sighing again. "What I was wondering was _why_ you have it."

James blinked a few times and tilted his head even more. "Well, you write with it, Professor. I was using it to take notes."

"I didn't see you writing anything when you started clicking it and disrupting the class."

"That's because you hadn't said anything for me to take notes about, Professor."

Sirius sniggered into his hand, and Remus kicked him under the desk. McGonagall simply blinked slowly and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Mr. Potter, I will ask you once and only once to please put that thing away while class is in session and takes notes with a _quill_ to avoid anymore distractions, is that understood?"

Now James looked indignant, sliding his feet off the desk and sitting up straight. "But Professor, Evans has got a click pen, too. Look."

Heads turned again, and Lily blushed under the intense gaze, pulling the pen toward her and onto her lap so nobody could see. McGonagall glanced her way for a brief moment before looking back at James.

"Miss Evans hasn't been clicking it about like it's some sort of jammed button on a lift. Your pen, however, best be out of my sight by the time I turn around again."

McGonagall turned her back to the class and walked to the front of the room, proceeding with the lesson as if nothing had happened. The buzz of the students speaking in hushed tones swelled, then died instantly when McGonagall looked back at them. Lily bent her head over her notes once more, but stole a glance at James just in time to notice him slide the click pen back into his pocket. He caught her gaze and grinned; not the cocky, Quidditch player smile he often tossed about like a politician might give away buttons, but a genuine one full of warmth and playfulness.

James Potter winked at her, then looked to the front of the room and dutifully took notes with his quill and ink. Lily Evans stared back for a moment, then tried and failed to pay attention to the lesson with her mind so consumed with the thoughts of pens and ink and secret smiles.

 **A/N:** If you liked the fic, please leave a review! :) -Izzy


End file.
